I don't know, my Belgian friend is a fluent speaker and he's translated back and forth to demonstrate how similar the two languages can be (with cognates, loans etc.). I don't think it is a very difficult language for Anglophones, except maybe the phonology.

Heh... I never heard an Anglophone pronounce Dutch so, that he/she sounded somewhat native. The 'g' is fine, they master most of the vocals (which gives away a clue already), but they all pronounce the 'r' as in English. Or they finish words like 'sneed (means cut (past tense))' with a d, while native speakers never end words with voiced consonants (what we say, sounds more like 'sneet')

What I don't get about Thai is the orthography. Why denote tone with a combination of homophone letters, vowel length and tone markers when they can just use the diacritics that already exist? Then they could cut down on half of the letters used and spelling would be a lot easier to learn and transliterate.

Talib wrote:What I don't get about Thai is the orthography. Why denote tone with a combination of homophone letters, vowel length and tone markers when they can just use the diacritics that already exist? Then they could cut down on half of the letters used and spelling would be a lot easier to learn and transliterate.

It is pretty chaotic, isn't it?

Talib wrote:

Sobekhotep wrote:Oh? You don't like the alveolar trill?

Maybe he has difficulty pronouncing it. A lot of Anglophones do.

But isn't he a native Dutch speaker?What do you call Dutch speakers using the -phone form? Batavophone?

Talib wrote:What I don't get about Thai is the orthography. Why denote tone with a combination of homophone letters, vowel length and tone markers when they can just use the diacritics that already exist? Then they could cut down on half of the letters used and spelling would be a lot easier to learn and transliterate.

It is pretty chaotic, isn't it?

Yeah, that's the only thing keeping me from dabbling with thai.

Talib wrote:

Sobekhotep wrote:Oh? You don't like the alveolar trill?

Maybe he has difficulty pronouncing it. A lot of Anglophones do.

But isn't he a native Dutch speaker?What do you call Dutch speakers using the -phone form? Batavophone?